


Five times John saw light (and one time he didn't)

by inter_spem_et_metum



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-17
Updated: 2012-05-17
Packaged: 2017-11-05 12:30:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inter_spem_et_metum/pseuds/inter_spem_et_metum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrazdova">Vrazdova</a> for the beta!</p><p>Partly inspired by KatrinDepp's "my head & my heart" fanvid, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOdXDm7fV0g&list=FLBkStwX6Lqfpozms1iVxU0Q&index=13&feature=plpp_video">here</a>.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Five times John saw light (and one time he didn't)

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Vrazdova](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrazdova) for the beta!
> 
> Partly inspired by KatrinDepp's "my head & my heart" fanvid, [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOdXDm7fV0g&list=FLBkStwX6Lqfpozms1iVxU0Q&index=13&feature=plpp_video).

 

**I.**

The beam from the technician's pocket-sized torch stabs John's pupils as he sits in the back of the ambulance, his legs hanging over the ledge between the open doors. Someone must've called the paramedics, although John can't fathom why. Another person appears to have called the police, which explains why Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade is there, hovering over John like a storm cloud.

The medic clicks off the light, leaving John blinded. "Looks like a very minor concussion. He's all right to sleep, but he shouldn't drive." John realises that the woman is addressing Lestrade and he looks up, but her face is obscured by two round, white bursts of light. John shakes his head, willing the afterimages to disappear. The lack of vision is doing nothing to calm the vague churning of his stomach.

"Don't worry, I'll give 'im a lift," John hears Greg say. There is a fuzzy, far-away quality to the detective inspector's voice that John can't place. What's happened to his hearing? First his eyes, now his ears. There's something thick and heavy around John's shoulders. He tentatively grasps the wool fabric. A blanket? He looks up, confused. Greg is eyeing him warily, as though John might bite.

"What's. Why is…" John falters. He looks to the detective inspector for help.

"John."

"Where's—"

" _John_." The syllable drops from Greg's lips with dead weight, and John feels something dark and indefinable skitter around the edges of his consciousness. He'd seen something. Only a little while ago, he thinks. Something very, very bad.

Abruptly, a question comes to him, and it is all-important. "Where is he? Where's _Sherlock_?" John's voice is spun glass, thin and shockingly fragile.

"John, they've already taken 'im away. Into the—into St. Bart's. Molly's going to—she's doing 'is. Well."

A siren that is not there begins to scream inside John's head and it feels as if all the air has been forced from his chest and replaced with sand. _Sherlock_. He can't breathe. He remembers now. The roof. _Sherlock!_ He can't. There's no air. His lungs are glass, crushed by the footsteps of the faceless bystanders around him, by the hands pulling him back, pulling him away from Sherlock's still-warm body, his bloodied face. He remembers. He remembers everything. Oh god.

"I saw…" John groans weakly, and then crumples into himself. Greg is there to catch him before he tumbles off the back of the ambulance.

"He—he hit… he's—"

"You're in shock, John; you need to focus. Try to breathe."

The detective inspector's mouth is moving but the words are only shapeless sounds, not syllables; John's ears are full of cotton and his eyes are pulsing with traces of horrible white light and there are too many people standing around _staring_ , too close, too many people to breathe. He wants desperately to break free, to push away the hands, to lie down next to Sherlock and see nothing but the clouds…

 

**II.**

John regains consciousness halfway through the drive back to Baker Street. He's grateful that Greg is the only one besides himself in the police car. Although Baker Street is the very last place John wants to go, he realises—with devastatingly familiar clarity—that the war is over; there's just the aftermath now, and nowhere for him to go _but_ home. If you could still call it that.

The detective inspector offers to stay, insisting he'll sleep on the couch and keep out of the way if that's what John wants. John politely declines, which of course does no good. Greg gives up, however, after John tersely informs him that he's spent the night alone in significantly more dangerous places, with injuries much more serious than a mild concussion.

"I'll be a phone call away if you need me," Greg reminds him as he shrugs on his coat in the doorway.

John knows he should thank him, but instead says, "I know." At least a small portion of the responsibility for Sherlock's actions ( _death_ ) lies on the police force's shoulders, and he isn't about to let the detective inspector forget it.

The unspoken accusation hangs heavy in the air between them, and it follows Greg down the stairs and out the door as John lowers himself onto the couch, still clutching the medic's blanket around his shoulders. _Maybe it's true about blankets and shock_ , he thinks to himself. _Not because shock makes you cold, but so you have something to hold onto_.

John shifts, and a glint of light catches his eye from across the room. He peers through the dusk to where Sherlock's microscope lies tipped over on its side at the edge of the desk, its steel arms sticking out at odd angles.

Sherlock had been looking at something through the eyepiece just the day before, after discovering the oily footprints of the Bruhl children's kidnapper at their boarding school—and he had left the bulb on. John realises, with a jolt of anguish, that he hadn't even bothered to ask what Sherlock had been trying to work out. Was it something that could've helped prove his own innocence? It's unlikely John will ever know.

He fixes his eyes on the tiny point of brightness in the darkening room, not caring this time as the light bores a circular pattern into his retinas. It is supremely unusual of Sherlock to leave his equipment in such disarray. John marvels at the still-burning bulb, at the way it seems to simultaneously mock Sherlock's absence and invoke his presence.

 _No, I know you're for real_ , he'd told him, less than twenty-four hours ago—well before the jeopardy of their situation had somehow transitioned, in Sherlock's mind, into an opportunity for suicide.

The detective's eyes had flashed up at him then, their startling blueness magnified by the light from his laptop screen. At the window, John had watched a disgruntled Greg Lestrade and a highly irritated Sally Donovan climb back into the police car and drive off.

 _One hundred percent?_ Sherlock had asked, a quiet unease hidden inside the question. John's mouth had tightened into a thin line. It unsettled him when Sherlock seemed uncertain, and it frightened him even more when the detective demanded reassurance, however indirectly.

 _Nobody could fake being such an annoying dick all the time_ , he'd answered, with half-feigned exasperation.

John feels the unexpected warmth of tears, and thinks of a thousand better things he could've said.

 

**III.**

The old brass nautical clock on the wall reads half eleven when a loud cry startles John awake—his own, he realises. The dream is still vivid in his mind. The wrinkled wool blanket is twisted thickly around his chest, and it takes a moment to comprehend that his body is sticky with sweat and not blood.

He tentatively touches a hand to his brow and draws it back. Only moisture. No crimson stain from where he had, just moments ago, bent over and touched his forehead to Sherlock's broken and bloodied one.

He needs to get out of Baker Street.

John finds the cognisance to pull on his jacket before heading down the stairs, even though his hands are shaking and he doesn't bother with the zip. Once on the sidewalk, he heads blindly to the right. His steps are slow and uneven. At first he sticks to familiar routes, but soon allows his feet to take him down unknown streets. He wanders for what seems like hours. Days. The sky is mostly clear, and the stars are cold pinpoints of light above his head, all too far out of reach.

When John finally stops, he's not entirely surprised to find himself outside the café where he and Sherlock had shared their first meal. Well, technically they hadn't _shared_ it, since Sherlock had been busy watching for Jennifer Wilson's cabbie and didn't eat while working cases. But John had managed to enjoy half a plate of excellent white-wine pasta before Sherlock had charged out of the restaurant and taken off running down the street, giving him no choice but to follow.

He pushes open the door. The café is crowded for the hour, and the only unoccupied table is the one by the window—the one he and Sherlock had shared. _Of course_ , he thinks, his mouth twisting into something between a grimace and a smile. _Insult to injury—why not?_ Apparently fate is in a joking mood tonight. Unfortunately, he isn't.

John stares at the empty booth, and then sits down anyway. He's not sure what he's doing here; he isn't hungry in the least. The wooden table has more scratches and initials carved into its surface than he remembers. Angelo might want to think about investing in some tablecloths.

There's a small cough to his right, and John looks up. It's Angelo. The ponytailed ex-con shifts his feet uncomfortably, arms crossed behind his back. He looks thinner, and his button-up denim shirt is new, although there's already a marinara sauce stain on the right cuff.

One look in Angelo's eyes tells John he's already heard the news. John opens his mouth to say something because he feels as though he ought to, but no words come.

Thankfully, Angelo speaks for him. "'E was a good man, 'e was. One of th' best." John nods, swallowing dryly. His throat feels tight, and the room is suddenly too warm for a jacket.

"I'm not gonna read the papers," Angelo proclaims sternly, his voice rising an octave. "Or listen to anythin' those bloody reporters say. They can go to hell, the lot of 'em. We knew 'im, and we knew what 'e stood fer, and nothin' no one says is goin' to make me think any different!" The big man opens his mouth to say something else and then hesitates, a faint blush rising in his round cheeks.

"I'd, ah, drink to that," John says, and although he means to sound encouraging, his voice falls flat.

"Anythin' from the bar—anythin' from the menu—on the house!" Angelo booms, seemingly relieved to have something to do other than talk. "We're closin' up in half 'n hour, but stay as long as you like. I'll get your order in with th' cook before 'e cleans up."

"No food, thanks. But a scotch would be fine," John hears himself say. "Neat, please." His voice sounds strange in his ears—dull and entirely too calm, when inside his head there's a scream threatening to break loose at any second. Angelo nods and goes to fetch John's drink.

 _None of this can be real_ , John thinks, with a rising sense of panic. This restaurant, this table, this window behind him with its picturesque view. Only eighteen months ago, he and Sherlock had sat here, watching, waiting, discussing—but it feels like a different century now. He closes his eyes, and the days whir by in his memory like cabs down an empty street—too many to remember, too fast to recall.

A vague sensation of illumination and warmth nearby causes John's eyes to flutter open, and he looks up to see Angelo with his scotch—and a small, white votive candle in a glass globe. The broad-shouldered man sets the glass of amber liquid in front of John and places the candle at the other end of the table.

"Fer Sherlock," Angelo says, nodding stiffly at the empty side of the booth. This time, he neither winks nor smiles.

 

**IV.**

The tube has stopped running by the time John leaves the restaurant, considerably less sober and not quite sure-footed. Rather than walk, he flags down a cab (a _cab_ , he thinks wryly), and slides into the worn leather back seat of the first one that stops.

He half-expects to see a pair of shining bifocals beneath bushy white eyebrows and a khaki worker cap as the cabbie turns to ask him where to, but it's a young Middle Eastern man ( _Pakistani_ , John's mind hazily supplies at the heavy accent), and not Jennifer Wilson's murderer.

 _Of course it isn't_ , John reprimands himself. _You shot him over a year ago_. Shot him to save Sherlock, to protect him—even though he'd only known the detective a little over forty-eight hours. But even then, John had known he'd willingly put his credibility—even his _life_ —on the line for Sherlock, if he'd asked him to.

Immediately after pulling the trigger, John had realised that not only would he do it again, but also that he hadn't hesitated in the slightest. The phrase _worth killing for_ had floated into his consciousness at that moment, but he'd swatted away the notion as one might a fly. There was no room for such complex thoughts in John's small, orderly world. Not at the time, anyway…

Of course, Sherlock is dead now, and there is no longer anything left to kill or die for.

John folds what he hopes is the appropriate number of bills into the cabbie's hand and tumbles out of the door and onto the sidewalk in front of 221B, somehow managing to remain (mostly) on his feet. The man thanks him profusely in broken English through the passenger window before he pulls away. Apparently John has just given the cabbie a generous tip. _Well. Good for him. We can pretend it's Christmas_ , John thinks disjointedly as he pulls the door closed behind him and plods up the stairs, shedding his jacket as he goes. It slips off his shoulders and crumples to the floor of the landing like an old skin.

The flat is dark, save for the small spot of light from the still-glowing bulb in Sherlock's unattended microscope. John wonders vaguely how long it will stay on until it burns out.

He goes to the couch and settles down. He can't sit in his chair, because there is an empty one across from it now and because the only thing saving John from parting with his last shred of sanity is the thought that he will leave Baker Street tomorrow—leave and not return for a long while, or perhaps never—because he can't bear the empty chair, or the empty flat, or the empty space in his life where Sherlock Holmes belongs.

Without really thinking, John staggers to his feet and goes to the bookshelf to the right of the fireplace. He retrieves Sherlock's emergency pack of cigarettes and the box of matches wedged between the world atlas and John's medical-school copy of _Gray's Anatomy_.

He'd picked the bookshelf because Sherlock had already discovered the pack tucked into the skull on the mantel, and the one in the butter drawer, and even the one rolled away in John's army duffle at the bottom of his bedroom closet. John had finally decided that a more conspicuous location might actually prove to be more concealing. Hiding places simply ceased to exist when Sherlock walked into a room.

He returns to the couch, fingers shaking as he rips open the plastic wrapping. He flips the cardboard top and pulls out a single, slim cigarette. He fumbles with the matchbox's sliding lid and eventually manages to strike one, nearly brushing the flame across his sleeve in the process.

His lungs hitch at the first inhale of smoke and he coughs, fresh tears springing to his eyes. That _smell_. It is both Sherlock and not-Sherlock; it is the reek of chaos and disorder in an otherwise highly organised mind. The scent of boredom bordering on disaster.

The second puff is slightly less abrasive, although John's mouth tastes unpleasantly of ash and burnt paper. God, now he remembers why he doesn't date smokers. His stomach roils suddenly with too much liquor and too little food and the unfamiliar nicotine, and he stubs out the cigarette on the floor, not particularly concerned with what Mrs. Hudson will say when she finds the scorch mark on the hardwood.

His head feels light as he sits back, and there is a sudden jab of pain in his right hand. He opens his fingers to see he's been clutching the matchbox tightly enough to leave red marks in the flesh of his palm.

John stares at the small, rectangular box. These matches will never again be used—not by Sherlock, anyway. In the half-darkness, he strikes another and watches the flame crawl down the thin wooden stem. Just as the fire begins to lick his fingertips, John drops the match to the floor. The acrid smells of sulfur and singed carpeting waft up at him accusingly.

He takes out a third and lights it, mesmerised. _I'll burn you … I will burn the_ heart _out of you._ Moriarty had made a promise to Sherlock, and he has fulfilled every word. Except that Sherlock's isn't the only heart Moriarty has burned.

As the moon moves across the sky and the night deepens to indigo, John lights the remainder of the matches, one by one. They fall at his feet, torched and dead.

 

**V.**

In Afghanistan, the surgeon had pushed a few low-grade tranquiliser tablets into John's hand before digging the bullet out of his shoulder, because the military hospital had been out of both local anesthetic and morphine. The sedatives were pitifully unhelpful (as John had known they would be), and he'd clamped his teeth down on the unbloodied cuff of his camouflage jacket and tried not to scream through the hour-and-forty-minute-long operation.

But not even the blinding pain of that hour and forty minutes can compare to the stabbing intensity of the sunlight as John opens his eyes the next morning. The scents of burnt matches and cigarette smoke linger in the air and in his nose. He hadn't drawn the curtains last night, or the night before—because he'd been at the window, watching for the police and assassins and god-knows-who-bloody-else—and the chilly morning light that floods the sitting room bores into his already aching eye sockets with the gentleness of an ice pick.

John sits up, and the sudden shift makes his head spin. He scrubs his hands across his face and steadies himself. It is Tuesday. On Tuesday mornings, he usually allows himself an extra cup of coffee with his eggs and toast before heading to the clinic. He'll postpone his appointments if Sherlock needs his help on a case, though. He always does.

However, Tuesday is also the day after Monday, and Monday—yesterday—Sherlock had jumped off the roof of St. Bart's and disappeared into four storeys' worth of thin air. Vanished, right in front of John's eyes, only to reappear in a pool of blood on the cold concrete—a white face in a dark coat, and a pair of bright blue eyes staring at nothing.

John fists his hands against his closed eyelids and pushes. Multi-coloured bursts of light bloom against the darkness of his vision. He wants to blow away the sun's mocking rays, to seal out the brazen light of this morning on which he is still alive and Sherlock is not.

John never knew daylight could be so violent.

 

**VI.**

There had been no light in Sherlock's eyes after the fall. No light, no life. He hadn't blinked at the small trickle of blood seeping into his right tear duct as the nurses turned him over; hadn't grasped John's hand as he'd frantically scraped at Sherlock's wrist for a pulse.

And afterward, there had been no sign, no message of justification; nothing to indicate a hoax, or a miracle, or a magic trick of the magnitude Moriarty had pulled off with Richard Brook— _nothing_.

No, all that remains is the silent flat and Sherlock's empty chair and the toppled microscope with its useless bulb that refuses to burn out.

_Fallen, but not burned…_

John stiffens. His head snaps towards the desk and he holds his breath and stares hard at the instrument, willing it to speak. To confirm the wild, half-formed hope that John knows—somewhere far in the back of his mind—he shouldn't dare consider.

The seconds tick by with the speed of aeons in the perfect stillness of the flat. John's head is throbbing from the alcohol, and his thoughts keep tangling around and inside of one another as they strive for sense, for significance, for completion.

Sherlock never would've left his lab equipment in such disorder, not unless there was a reason for it; that much John knows to be true. Did one of the police officers accidentally overturn the microscope when they came to the flat to arrest Sherlock? Could John himself have knocked it over when he punched the chief superintendant? He can't remember. He doesn't know.

It's too much.

John crosses his arms over his knees and buries his forehead in his lap. He is still for a long time. No one comes to the door, and because his mobile is off it does not ring. The weak winter sun eventually drops behind a fleet of rolling storm clouds, and the flat is once again bathed in late-afternoon dusk.

Several hours later, when John lifts his head, Sherlock's microscope is still gleaming.  
  
  



End file.
